The Wisdom Of The Crowd

Khamenei thinks the Iranian people are dumb sheep. OK he may not come out and outright say so, but you can glean this from the way he has tied up the rules of Iranian society into a neat and tidy knot, so tight, it can’t be undone. Even by John Kerry’s hair gel.

Iranians are not allowed to vote for just any president, Khamenei has to narrow down the choices for them. No surprise then, that after the recent Presidential election in Iran, the “Iranian People” picked his favorite candidate for President, Rouhani. A nice smiling longtime loyal subject of the Kingdom.

It’s not as if Rouhani even wanted the job. He was asked to take it by Khamenei, and of course, as loyal subjects of the realm always do, he accepted. I’m sure, with honor.

Apparently the feeling Khamenei harbors towards us, is that if those of us who live in Qom, or Tehran, or abroad, are mixed in with those cute and quaint peasants in those cute and quaint Iranian mountain villages, chaos will result. That an Iranian riding a Mercedes mixed in with an Iranian riding a donkey, can’t make a sane decision between them.

Almost all of modern Iranian society rules and regulations come under this “Shepherd Complex” that Khamenei and apparently all religious clerics, in all religions, suffer from, and feel about their flocks. The people under the care of any priest are always referred to as “his flock”.

But people aren’t sheep. And shepherds if left to their own devices often do other things to the sheep in their care, when no one is looking.

There is a scientific phenomenon however that flies in the face of this idea. That the Iranian people are not sheep, that a donkey riding villager can in fact tell a swindle when he is confronted with one, that Iranians collectively, simply are more than smart enough, evolved enough than the holy beings that rule them, and can decide for themselves, and therefore do need tending, or in our case, fleecing.

This scientific observation is known as “The Wisdom of the Crowd”, and it is the phenomenon that suggests that the people of Iran, or any group of people, when they decide on something together, are in fact smarter than ANY single individual could be.

Or, that Khamenie is not as smart as he thinks he is, and according to science, he is in fact less smart, (possibly stupid) than the Iranian people collectively.

Here’s the official definition:

“The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. A large group’s aggregated answers to questions involving quantity estimation, general world knowledge, and spatial reasoning has generally been found to be as good as, and often better than, the answer given by any of the individuals within the group.”

I knew it!

Apparently this phenomenon applies to US politics as well as Iranian social conditions. Rewinding history with this knowledge in hand, even the unsophisticated, dumb, illiterate, and redneck Americans managed to determine that Clinton and the Democrats had failed, and so they rewarded Bush and the Republicans. And then when Bush failed, they rewarded the Democrats again, this time with Obama. Now as Obama appears to be failing the Democrats, it looks like the American people might just sway the balance to the Republicans in 2016 again. Or if Obama manages to save enough face, they may give Hilary a chance.

But make no mistake, in the US, at the very end of the game, after all the posing and maneuvering is done, the “Wisdom of the Crowd” prevails.

Here’s hoping that the common Iranian villager sitting on his donkey, prevails in Iran one day.

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